I owe as much of my success to an uncompromising obstinacy as to any original ideas.

I learned many years ago never to waste time trying to convince my colleagues.

The single most important decision any of us will ever make is whether or not to believe the universe is friendly.

No worthy problem is ever solved within the plane of its original conception.

The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed to the empty. The trite objects of human efforts — possessions, outward success, luxury—have always seemed to me contemptible.

There have already been published by the bucketsful such brazen lies and utter fictions about me that I would long since have gone to my grave if I had allowed myself to pay attention to them.

Earth is the insane asylum of the universe.